


Love is speaking in code

by nearperfectthing



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: all of the emotional manipulation and abuse you've come to expect from this family, mentions of other family members, not connor though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 03:09:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20900669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nearperfectthing/pseuds/nearperfectthing
Summary: Thirty of so years of the siblings Roy, in all the ways they love and hate each other.





	Love is speaking in code

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story about the way the Roy siblings grew up, which is to say, it is not very happy. Title is from the song "If Work Permits". Hope you enjoy!

They are born one after another, Kendall then Shiv then Roman. They are dressed in the same pressed black and white outfits, shined shoes. They are presented as a group, the collected children of Logan Roy and Caroline Collingwood, a perfect matching set of children ready to sit quietly and watch tennis, use the correct silverware, say sir and ma'am. It is in these moments, where they are all together in a line, matching, equal, that the Roy children hate each other most.

Kendall is proud of the name Roy. From the very first time he writes it down, in colored pencil on a first grade assignment, he feels the importance in the simple shapes, the loop of the R, the curve of the O. He always writes his name like that, Kendall Roy, on every assignment, even though he’s the only Kendall in the class. He understands from an early age that he, Kendall, is important because he, Kendall, is Kendall Roy.

Shiv likes to hide her last name. Not because she’s embarrassed, not at all. She likes to be Shiv, smart and quick and a little mean so that people think she’s cool, and then she learns to whip out the Roy, and suddenly, she’s terrifying. This is the first time Shiv thinks she understands why her dad does what he does.

First, Roman swallows his last name when he says it, so that it’s almost indecipherable. He doesn’t want people to know, just upon meeting him, that he’s Roman Roy, so much less than the rest of his family. He doesn’t want to know what that understanding looks like in their eyes. He doesn’t want to know what it looks like reflected in his own. And then Roman learns to say it with an inflection. A certain asshole-gravitas. He learns to pause on his own last name for just a split second, a laugh that lets everyone know he’s in control of the conversation. Yeah, he’s Roman Roy, fuck up of the family, what’s it to you? He’s going to be a fucking billionaire.

Everything with Logan is a game, all of them learn that young. Many of the games are rigged, many of them are rigged against Roman. Roman loses, and he loses, and he loses. Sometimes Logan tells him he’s a disappointment, a moron who will never amount to anything, a pathetic loser crybaby child. Sometimes Logan hits him. Sometimes Logan just forces up Roman’s chin, looks him in the eye, and shakes his head, leaves the room. That one is the worst of all. Roman learns that if he tries hard in the games, if he takes his loss without letting his eyes fill with tears or his cheeks turn red, then Shiv will sneak into the kitchen and take cookies, bring them back and split them in half to share between them, until Roman is so worn out he falls asleep. Kendall is harder to predict. It isn’t based on the game, on how Roman played or how he reacted. It’s some internal calculus Roman can never access, whether Kendall laughs in his face, repeats the words _pathetic loser crybaby child,_ or Kendall wraps his skinny arms around Roman’s shoulders until Roman feels a little – just a little – better.

When Kendall is fifteen, he wins a speech competition at his school. It’s a school filled with kids who’ve gotten every advantage in life, to the point that they’re almost on equal footing when they get there, equal footing two miles up from the rest of the world. It’s not an easy school to do well in, but Kendall wins the competition, voted by a panel of five teachers who no longer bother to check the kids’ last names, each one more impressive than the last. They give him an award at the end of the year assembly, all the parents present. Logan claps for him, and afterwards, running the circuit of important people to talk to, he says to everyone, _This is Kendall, my son, the one who won the award for the speech competition_ and Kendall sees something in Logan’s eyes, real, actual pride. It feels like being able to run to England and back. It feels like the best rhyme in the best rap music. It’s an addicting feeling, and Kendall’s always been an addict. From the moment of that assembly on, he’s thinking about how to top the last accomplishment, how to get that feeling back. Sometimes, he’s pretty sure coke is the safer option.

Shiv’s first job in politics is in fundraising. They send her out to meet with wealthy donors, to make sure they’re happy. Shiv is good at it, because she’s spent a lifetime figuring out whether or not wealthy people are happy. She works her way up the ranks, becomes indispensable, and then she quits. They ask her what she wants, that first campaign she’s working on, and she tells them she wants to be a strategist, not a fundraiser. They tell her they can make it happen, if she holds on, just a few more months, just this one important event, one more person to sweet-talk. Shiv walks out the door. She goes to their rival, the up and coming state senator looking to take the mantle, and she says she wants to be a strategist. They hire her on the spot, and Shiv’s real life begins.

Logan pays a lot of money for Roman to go to college, uses all his influence. He pays a lot more money and uses a lot more influence to keep Roman in college. When asked, Roman tells people he’s having all kinds of new experiences in school, which is mostly drinking cheap beer at parties instead of drinking expensive whiskey poached from rich, forgetful parents. Logan probably knows this, because that’s what money and influence is for. Roman studies business because everything else is stupid, but business is stupid too and he hates everyone he meets, versions of himself who are smarter or more hard-working but from less important families. They look up to Roman, and he lets them drink cheap beer with him, makes fun of them behind their backs, or sometimes out in the open. Doing whatever you want, that’s what money and influence is for.

Shiv learns to weaponize her first name too. _Shiv_, she understands, has a certain edginess, a certain coolness that people like. A little scary, a flash in her eyes. But _Siobhan_ is elegant, it forces the speaker to drop into an almost whisper when they say it, forces them to pause over the syllables to get it right. It makes people uncomfortable. Siobhan Roy takes control of a room just by forcing people to say her name.

When Kendall is in rehab, the best rehab money can buy, they tell him not be ashamed of addiction. That addiction is not a moral failing, it is a sickness, that he is on his way to recovery and it’s going to be hard but they’re confident he can do it. The determination lasts as long as the rehab does, because clearly no one has told the people at Waystar that addiction is not something to be ashamed of. Clearly no one has told Logan. Logan isn’t angry at Kendall, he doesn’t yell, which Kendall had half expected – he put the company at risk, after all. Logan doesn’t mention it at all. None of his staff mentions it, not even Frank. Even Shiv is too polite when he sees her the next month at a family event. And then Roman says _hey dumb-fuck, how was rehab?_ as he walks by, doesn’t even stop for an answer. The way Roman says it is dripping with distaste, but the same way he would have said _how was the gluten-free bakery?_ When Kendall is getting high in a stranger’s house in New Mexico, he calls Roman.

Maybe Shiv was supposed to side with her mother, as the only daughter. But call Logan any name you want, he never believed Shiv was any less his. Maybe Caroline had wanted a daughter to teach to behave like her, so elegant and removed and respectable people didn’t realize how cruel she could be, a perfect mini-Caroline with a mini-Caroline accent. Instead, she got Shiv, her father’s brilliant weapon, Irish name and all, who flies through school with ease, who chooses to go outside the company and yet Logan forgives her for it. It’s as if from those very early days, Shiv in white mary-janes and her hair tied back with a matching white bow, she knew that her father would forgive her this betrayal twenty years in the future, and she was already loyal to him. Or maybe Caroline just never played the games to insist on the loyalty from her children. Maybe if she’d shown them those hints of the possibility of love the way Logan did, sprinkled across the years so that his children chased them down, pushing each other out of the way in the path to his approval, then the siblings Roy would love Caroline too. Instead, she watched, and then she walked away. She didn’t need to turn around to know that none of her children were following. Shiv swapped a hair ribbon for a cellphone glued to her ear, confident and determined, even when she didn’t know the answer. Shiv was the best Roy of the Roys.

Caroline says _Ro-ro_ and Logan says _Romulus_ and the staff at the Waystar say _Roman_ and Kendall and Shiv say _Rome_ and some days Roman doesn’t know which one of them he is, which one of him he hates most.

On bad days, Shiv thinks that Tom is just like everyone else she knows, scheming and determined to be on top, willing to betray and lie. That Tom, unlike everyone else she knows, is a little bit dumb, and therefor deeply loyal to her. That Tom, unlike everyone else she knows, will betray and lie not just for himself, but for her. On bad days, Shiv thinks this is why she loves Tom. On good days, she remembers that Tom is handsome, and not at all her type. She remembers realizing that Tom was handsome, despite not being her type, and the delightful feeling of still being able to surprise herself. This is why Shiv fell in love.

Romulus killed his brother Remus, for power or for revenge or for control or just because he could, depending on which version of the myth you believe. Perhaps that’s what Logan was thinking when his third son was born. If so, he’s never said it out loud. But Roman knows how badly that gift of a name turned out. He has never been the stronger son. Even the day he betrays Kendall in front of everyone, puts his hand down when he should be raising it high. This, too, Roman does out of fear.

In Kendall’s dreams, he’s still married to Rava. Sometimes they are as happy as they were the day they got married, laughing at nothing jokes, fucking in every room of the oversized apartment. Other times he is rushing to another meeting, doing Logan’s bidding, and she is leaving furious messages on his voicemail, telling him his kids won’t recognize him anymore. Which is to say, Kendall dreams of the truth. When he wakes up, he feels awful, regardless of the dream, but then again, he felt awful when he went to bed too.

Logan Roy teaches his children to love him, to fear him, to respect him, to fight for his approval, and they abide by his teaching. There are moments, even, when he loves them for it, for the ways they become to people he wants them to be. Logan wants to play his children against each other. He wants one to win at the others’ loss. He wants them to beg him to let them win, at the others’ loss. But Logan’s children have more depth than he gives them credit for. Somewhere, deep in themselves, they recognize that they are being played. What Logan doesn’t realize is it is in these moments, when he has split them up and forced them to do what they most despise, forced them to watch each other suffering and humiliated at their own hands, these are the moments that the Roy children see each other, these are the moments that the Roy children love each other most.


End file.
